I am so fucking done with American tumblr rn.
When Ferguson etc happened, we Europeans educated ourselves, we cried with you.
When Charlie Hebdo and Germanwings happened, what do you do? You devalue our mourning by saying “blablabla white guy YOU’RE ALL ISLAMOPHOBIC”.NO. STOP IT.
I am so fucking angry.
wut
When I see things like this, I sometimes wonder how Europe has a “dumb American” stereotype when people from Europe say shit like this.
“shit like this”.
Wonderful.
You know what? The only words of understanding I have seen the past few day on my dash were from Germans and French people. I have gotten a few American asks expressing their condolences after that rage post I made went viral.This post
stems from the simple fact that 80 fucking percent of the posts about
the tragedy I saw were things like “Oh, they’re only checking for mental
illnesses bc he is white”Not a single fucking word about the victims. 150 people were killed.
An entire high school class, babies, people who were in that plane and were looking forward to see their loved ones again.This tragedy has hit Germany so fucking hard.
You know what many of us did? We have put flags outside. Half mast. With black ribbons.
You
might not know it, but flags in Germany mean shit is getting serious.
We don’t put flags outside. This may seem weird to literally any other
country of the world, but, outside the world cup or really really bad
tragedies, you don’t see flags. You DON’T.
Schools don’t have them, courts don’t have them, our fucking POLICE STATION does not have them. Normal people don’t have them.
The
last time I remember that we have put some up was Winnenden. A student
went on a killing spree in his school and killed 16 people, including
himself. And let me tell you: Our country was paralized.
So yeah. A
good method to measure the extent of shit going down here is to look at
the number of flags. The more flags. the worse.
And let me tell you, I have been drowned in flags and black ribbon while walking the streets of my city.
And what do we get? No ounce of sympathy.
No one talks about the innocent victims.Instead,
we get told that we’re islamophobic because we don’t say that that
pilot was a terrorist. Oh yeah, “because he was white.”
The definition of terrorism is violence against civilians to achieve political, religious or ideological goals.
Nope, nope, and nope. He did not want to achieve any goal beside killing himself.
That he took all those innocents with him is so fucking awful, but this is not terrorism.
So please, stop trying to make this a thing about terrorism or racism, because it is NOT.Yes,
racism, islamophobia and sexism is awful. I, as a history/political
science major who actually really involved in fighting all this,
wholeheartedly agree.
But it is a complete different area and has
nothing to do with this tragedy. (”fun” fact: The first thing that was
checked was whether he had any terrorist motives like Breivik (a
Christian terrorist btw)).So yeah, I as someone from Europe, may
have not said “shit like this” if more people from outside here had
expressed a little sympathy, if
more people had grieved with us, if more people had actually thought
about the victims instead of trying to twist this tragedy into a thing
that it is not, just to fit their crusade.Please, stop making this tragedy about yourselves.
A few words of sympathy, a bit of empathy for a country that is SHOCKED.
Is that to much to ask for?
Maybe I wouldn’t write “shit like this” then.And what about Spain? 51 people on the plane. That’s terrible.
First: my condolences.
I’ll try to explain why this discrepancy in post tone and quantity. When something like a plane crash or Charlie Hebdo happens, you will see the mourning already, in the mainstream media, in your regular social media feeds. Nobody is spending any energy focusing on how the victims of the crash or the shooting weren’t victims. In your own words, it’s hit you very hard, in your country there are very great and open shows of mourning.
That’s not what happened with Ferguson. That’s why Tumblr is where people are making noise. That’s why attention was brought to the fact that had the pilot not been white, the scrutiny would have been very different. No one’s saying the pilot did it because of Islamaphobia, they’re saying that if he had been a Muslim, the situation would have been very different. The media and general public treatment would have not been a search for motives but an immediate label of terrorism.
People have jumped forward to the overall media significance of this because NO ONE is saying that the passengers weren’t victims. They may not specifically have put up a post mourning them, but has anyone said anything about them otherwise? It may be insensitive, but it would be hard to continuously mourn every public tragedy. You’re angry about US tumblr blogs not being sensitive enough? Imagine if that was your news outlets. Always, for your entire life and generations before. And not just not mourning enough, but actually pulling up each passenger’s history and hinting at maybe them being the cause for this. And all over Facebook, the people you work with and see in school, a lot of them are saying that too. Yeah, that’s what the equivalent situation would be.
You want to come on Tumblr and see what, people raising awareness for what? No one is blaming the passengers for anything. That’s what the Ferguson posts are, for venting, sure, but even more for raising awareness and education. Media blackouts, media spin, these were a huge part of the reasons WHY the posts were being spread. They’re not to say that the victims of anti-Black racism or Islamophobia are more important than others, they’re to point out that they ARE
victims.